“Well, I don’t know if …”
“Help a couple of lovers out, right?”
“Oh, all right then.” And the smile was back in her voice again.
“Thanks,” said Harry, and put the phone down.
Then he went upstairs and got his heavy overcoat. It would be cold on Lake Constance this time of year …
And it was. Normally, lacking a formal introduction, and therefore co-ordinates, the Necroscope would have had to find his way by trial and error, obliged to proceed in a series of cautious Möbius jumps. But in fact he did have the co-ordinates; they had been there in his metaphysical mind ever since he’d previsioned this visit during his stay at E-Branch HQ in London.
Therefore, in precisely the same way as he had been previously enabled to find Le Manse Madonie, and the Drakesh Monastery, he was able to make a single jump to Mesmer’s last resting place. Or to the graveyard, at least. All he needed do was recall to mind the vision he’d had, let the location enter itself into his computer mind, and aim himself in that direction via a Möbius door.
Then, when he vacated the Continuum … he was there.
He stood at the crossroads of his vision. On the one hand, beyond a low stone wall, the mainly untended plots and leaning headstones of the cemetery were half-obscured by long grasses. While on the other a faded signpost said “Meersburg,” pointing the way to a near-distant town whose silhouette shimmered on a backdrop of shining water.
But Harry wasn’t here for the view.
Following the weed-grown wall until he found an iron gate standing half open, he went into the graveyard and for a minute or two wandered between the plots, letting his feet simply take him where they would. It was very peaceful, quiet, and not too bitterly cold; but south-west beyond the town and lake, seeming suspended in the clear clean air, he could make out blue, snow-capped, distantly-rising mountains. Then, if only for a moment, the peace of the moment seeped into him.
There was a spell on the place, which the Necroscope was loath to break. But he knew he must. And: “Franz Anton?” Harry spoke out loud, secure in his loneliness. “Sir, you don’t know me, but I was told you were here.”
Don’t know you? The answer came at once. Oh, but I do! I can even see you, in a fashion; I can see your flame, and feel its warmth. And I haven’t seen or felt anything in a long time. Don’t know you? But most of us know you by now, Necroscope. Or we’ve heard of you, anyway. And now … it’s an honour to meet you personally.
It came as no surprise to Harry to find himself standing at the foot of Mesmer’s simple grave; his talent, or “natural” instinct, had led him here. But as usual, he didn’t quite know how to deal with the praise and the compliments that the Great Majority were wont to offer him—especially hearing them from someone like Mesmer.
But he was mindful of what Sir Keenan had told him: that this great man had lost a lot of faith in himself, and how he might have to restore it before he in turn could benefit from his visit. And so:
“Sir,” he said. “I won’t beat about the bush. I’m here to ask a favour of you.” Yes, I know, said Mesmer in a little while, very quietly. And Harry, I only wish I could help you. But I may not be able to.
“Sir?”
You’re not the only one with problems, Harry, Mesmer told him. And I have had mine—oh, a lot longer than you have had yours!
“Do you care to explain?” The Necroscope tucked his overcoat’s tails under him and sat on the rim of Mesmer’s slab. “I have the time if you do.” And he sensed the other adjusting to and appreciating his living presence. Then:
Did you know, Harry, Mesmer began with a sigh, that as a youngster I was much taken with Paracelsus’s theories? Older, I mainly discarded them. But I remember when I was thirty-one, I passed my medical examinations—with honours, I may say—and my thesis was much influenced by Paracelsus. Horace supplied the heading or motto for that work of mine:
“Multa renascentur, quae jam cecidere cadentque,
Quae nunc sunt in honore …”
Do you know Latin, Necroscope? Ah, no! A stupid question! For it’s a “dead” language now, of course. But in any case the languages of the dead are all one to you.
“And they often convey more than is actually said,” Harry pointed out. “You thought it in Latin, but I understood anyway:
“‘Much will rise again that has long been buried, and much become submerged which is held in honour today.’”
He sensed Mesmer’s nod. Especially relevant, it would now appear. Or perhaps not? The words seem applicable—applied to yourself, that is: your discoveries, your “friends” and mode of life?—but not in the sense intended. And never in connection with myself! (Harry heard his sigh.) Just another contradiction and my life was full of them! I was so … undoctorlike! So unprofessional. This constant searching for—this actual belief in—a metaphysical medium in which I might work entirely physical cures. Thus my work remains “buried,” in no wise “held in honour,” to this day. Plainly my reasoning was awry. But as has since been proved, my reasons for reasoning thus were very well founded. Small consolation. In any case, I see no cause to deny what I was never ashamed of. My beliefs and systems were in accord with the age, primitive, and my conclusions incorrect.
“A great many thousands of people have benefited from your hypnosis,” the Necroscope told him. “You were the first medical practitioner to recognize—or invent?—it.”
(Mesmer’s unseen shrug, by no means complacent, perhaps a little despondent?) There were others who worked similar veins. But “inventor?”—scarcely! Why, the first true adepts weren’t even men but creatures of nature! The snake, for example—
“—And the octopus? I’ve heard how they ‘mesmerize’ crustacea, crabs and such—before eating them.”
Really?
“So it would seem. Fascination, focused through the eyes or the mind behind them. A sort of living magnetism. But didn’t you call it just that: ‘Animal Magnetism’? Magnetisn, yes: beguilement or hypnotism. Mainly, it’s your contribution we recognize: Mesmerism.” It might be flattery, but it was largely the truth. While the sciences of the mind—and in Harry’s case, mind over matter—had long since eroded and even obliterated Mesmer’s contributions, still his work had been a landmark.
And you tell me it has been beneficial? D’you know, Harry, but in life, the last quarter century of my life at least—especially after I returned to Switzerland and semi-retirement—I scarcely bothered to follow all the developments, the mutations taking place in my science? I knew nothing of what went on outside myself. My theories had been so thoroughly and frequently ridiculed that even I had begun to lose faith! In 1814 Wolfart published my life work. But much too late. It was already out of date.
Likewise in death: I have been too slow, too lax, too … disillusioned? And now you tell me my work is beneficial? Well, to tell the truth, I am not totally out of touch. Indeed, since you came along, the teeming dead have never been more in touch! But as I hinted, I haven’t been taking notice. As in life, I’ve stuck to my own guns and ignored everyone else’s. Now I am left alone with nothing more than my own theories. “Quack” theories, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate. My “fluidum,” indeed! I see how ridiculous it seems now. But I am a man of habit, as you see.
How was Harry to read that? Was Franz Anton Mesmer the odd man out? The only one of the teeming dead to refute the old law that in death a man will continue to do what he did in life? By continuing to isolate himself—at first from his contemporaries and detractors, and now from more recent practitioners—he may have done just that! And so the Necroscope was disappointed and frustrated. By now Mesmer should be one of the greatest, or even the greatest, hypnotist of all time. But not if he’d abandoned his art, or failed to follow it through. So perhaps Harry had come to the wrong man, the wrong place after all.
Beneficial, Mesmer mused again. Well, I suppose so. In the reduction of pain, at least. But as the plaything of fakirs and stage magicians?
What, to make men bark like dogs or quack like ducks? His thoughts had turned sour; he was losing interest.
“What about psychiatry, psychoanalysis?” Harry challenged him. “Nothing bogus or theatrical about that. And your work is a foundation stone, perhaps the foundation stone!”
Do you think so? It’s very kind of you to say so. And of course I have made advances … well, theoretical advances, at least, if only in my own mind. For down here there has been no one to practice on; I haven’t—what, magnetized?—anyone in a long time. And being dead, incorporeal, sightless, is hardly conducive to practical experimentation! It has been, shall we say, something of a disadvantage? (It was the closest the dead man had come to humour, however dry.) I have thought about it, certainly. But how may I exert my will to influence or “hypnotize” someone I can’t even see?
“I’m not sure, sir,” Harry answered. “That’s why I’m here: in order to find out.”
You came here to consult me? In my … professional capacity? In death? Despite that I was discredited in life?
Obviously flattery wasn’t going to suffice. The Necroscope saw now that indeed Mesmer no longer had faith in himself, and it was all-important that he should have. For if he was without faith, how could he expect his subject to have any? Harry understood how in large part it is the subject’s belief in hypnotism that makes it work. But still:
“I need someone to examine me,” he doggedly persisted. “To hypnotize me, look inside my head and tell me what’s gone wrong in there. Since you have had a hundred and seventy years to perfect your art, I supposed you would be my best bet. That was my line of reasoning, and it’s why I came here to see you.”
Ah, but you’re one hundred and seventy years too late! For I am dead, after all! How may someone who is ex-animate examine the living? And then, quickly, as if to change the subject:
But the way you came here—this miracle of instantaneous travel! What manner of new science is this?
For the moment—despite his frustration—the Necroscope allowed himself to be sidetracked from the main purpose of his visit … or perhaps not. For he had learned how to argue with the best (or worst) of them, and was quick to see how Mesmer’s interest in his weird talents might provide a key to the door that the good doctor seemed to have locked on his own hypnotic skills. And so he said, “A science, sir?”
But if not magic, how else would you describe it? Mesmer couldn’t understand Harry’s hesitancy, the pause of a few seconds in which his mind worked overtime to develop his plan of campaign, his word game. And:
“A new science,” he eventually mused … and denied it in a moment. “Well, scarcely! For as far as I’m aware and excluding my lost son, I’m its sole practitioner! It isn’t something I can publish, for the math is alien, metaphysical. The equations don’t equate, and the formulae mutate within themselves. And as you’ll appreciate, if a formula isn’t constant it isn’t a formula.”
Mesmer tried to understand him, gave up and said: Myself, I was no great mathematician. Are you saying … you’re so far ahead of your time you would be misunderstood?
Harry nodded. “I suppose so. Much like yourself, in your time. Oh, I could ‘prove’ what I do, but even so I’d probably be called a charlatan, a fraud, a trickster or stage magician, as you were. We see men on our television screens who ‘fly’ or make massive monuments ‘disappear,’ or read the minds of their audiences. Sometimes they ‘converse’ with the dead, too! They are fakers, of course. Yet at the same time, I am living proof that the physical and metaphysical are definitely linked. You were ridiculed—worse, you now ridicule yourself!—for having sought or ‘invented’ a metaphysical medium or ‘fluidum’ in order to explain your physical cures. Yet even now we can’t be sure that the fluidum doesn’t in fact exist.”
But of course we can be sure, because it hasn’t been discovered! Mesmer was hooked … not only on their philosophical exchange but more probably, the Necroscope thought, on the notion, the forlorn hope, that perhaps in proposing his theories he hadn’t been such a quack after all.
“I’m not sure I understand you,” Harry answered, knowing full well Mesmer’s meaning but feigning ignorance. “Not discovered? But neither have we explored the deepest ocean floor, yet we’re sure it’s there!”
I mean that in your modern age of radio waves, X-rays and gamma rays, and what have you—in the super-scientific world in which you live—there has not been discovered the tiniest, remotest germ of evidence to support the existence of any kind of fluidum! I mean that if it was there, your scientists would have found it. I am not that much out of touch, Necroscope!
Harry pounced:
“And yet there is an entirely physical, universal force, with universal laws that are universally accepted, whose influence within metaphysical or near-metaphysical spheres is extraordinary and entirely inexplicable! To give you a clue, it was ‘discovered’ by Sir Isaac Newton, who died seven years before you were born.”
Gravity? Well, a fluidum of sorts, granted. But metaphysical? I have to say pish! We see its effects every day, and as you say, its laws are visible and universally accepted.
“Its physical laws,” Harry nodded. “But can its other side be explained as easily?”
What other side?
“But didn’t one of your ‘quack’ theories consider the motion of planetary bodies contributory to the ailments of human minds and bodies? Wasn’t that what your fluidum theory was all about?” Harry sensed an incorporeal frown and quickly went on:
“The moon, sir! It lures the tides, you’ll agree?”
Yes.
“And the fluid balance of the brain, to turn men and creatures into lunatics? So weren’t you right after all?”
Gravity, my fluidum?
“Perhaps,” Harry shrugged. “Who knows? And I’ve only given you one example of the moon’s influence.”
Eh?
“Isn’t a woman’s cycle governed by the phases of the moon? And what was unknown in your time, and probably unknown to you even now, a myriad ocean polyps and corals all around the world spawn together and turn the sea to milk, all in resonance with the moon.”
But—
“—And sunspots?”
What?
“Disturbances on the surface of the sun. Whirlpools in its plasma. They interfere with our radio waves, television, communications in general. And the sun’s rays cause cancers. So who can say about the other heavenly bodies?”
I was right then? (Mesmer was utterly fascinated now.) As the spheres influence each other, the earth, its oceans, denizens, and all inanimate matter, so they also influence … men?
“So it would appear. But haven’t the astrologers been telling us that for ages?”
Bah! Mesmer was vastly disappointed. You leap from science to fantasy in a breath!
But: “No,” the Necroscope denied it. “I move from the physical to the metaphysical. Do you know, I had an almost identical argument with Möbius?”
Eh? I don’t know him.
“Well then, you two should get together some time. August Ferdinand would enjoy that, I’m sure. But he would have been a young man, only twenty-three or -four, when you died. He was a mathematician, an astronomer, and a very brilliant man. Unlike you, he continued to develop his sidereal math in death and so discovered his Möbius Continuum, without which I wouldn’t have been able to visit you. For just as it applied to Möbius—an incorporeal, ‘metaphysical’ being—so it applied to me, or I was able to apply it to myself. He and I, we imposed the metaphysical upon the physical. But more to the point, what is the Möbius Continuum—if not another example of your fluidum?”
My fluidum … is several, even many things? Is that what you’re saying?
“It could be,” the Necroscope gave a shrug. “I don’t know.” (And in all truth he didn’t.) “But just because it hasn’t been discovered or isolated yet doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Why, it’s a theory of mine that if men can imagine something, then sooner or late
r they’ll discover, or make it, or prove it!”
I have heard something like that before, (Mesmer was far more animated now). “I think, therefore I am!” It seems to me that what you propose is simply a new—and if I may say so, an egocentric—slant on an old theme: “I imagine it could be so, wherefore I shall make it so!”
“Something like that, yes.”
A many-layered fluidum, Mesmer mused. But a moment later, sharply, even suspiciously: And I think that you are trying to inveigle me!
“Well of course I am; I need your help! But that’s not to say I’ve been talking rubbish.”
All of this to make me attempt what can’t be done? What I cannot do?
The Necroscope shook his head. “That runs contrary to our discussion,” he said. “Not to mention the evidence.”
What evidence?
“My evidence. I’m an entirely physical human being, yet I habitually impose myself on the metaphysical Möbius Continuum. Why shouldn’t we simply reverse the process?”
But you are unique, Harry, (Mesmer sighed), while I am one of a very Mundane Majority. You’re of the air above, while I am of the earth below. Indeed, I have even passed into the earth! Mundane, aye. Why, I can’t even see you! Not the physical you.
“The Great Majority,” Harry told him then, “men like yourself, sir, but not nearly as learned as you—not all of them—have helped me in so many ways, so many times, that without them I would be literally nothing, gone from the world forever; not even dead, not necessarily, but very likely undead! As for sight: I believe you will see me as no other man saw me before. You’ll even be able to see into me, if I open my mind to you.”
Explain.
But Harry had no more time for arguments or explanations, philosophical or otherwise. He might have talked about the vampire Thibor Ferenczy, dead for hundreds of years, who in his own way had “hypnotized” and entered the mind of his necromancer protégé Boris Dragosani, in order to direct his thoughts and actions from a thousand miles away. He could have mentioned Thibor’s vampire “father” Faethor, who from the grave had lured up liches from their graves to perform an act of vengeance. And as he had pointed out, he himself was living proof of the many ways in which the dead may have influence over the living. But if a picture is worth a thousand words, there were pictures in the Necroscope’s mind that were worth millions. And: